Abstract:
Correction of wrong practices or thoughts by the pr
oducer or the adoption of a new
production technique shows the success of rural dev
elopment studies. This study was
conducted to assess the effect of Integrated Dairy
Farming Project on the Çakmak and
Ekinciler villages before and after implementing th
e European funded “Integrated Dairy
Cattle Project” carried out by the Diyarbakır Comme
rcial Exchange in southeastern
Anatolia region of Turkey, in 2006. Project village
s have enough arable lands and dry
farming is performed. The number of cattle is incre
asing compared to the other villages in
the province. In order to make a comparison between
the years, three surveys were
conducted in 2006, 2007, and 2009 by using question
naires. The findings of the research
show that a considerable portion of the respondents
(37%) stated that they did not trust
the analysis of this kind of project that had not t
aken into consideration the rural needs.
While 54.4% of the farmers wanted to sell their milk
to cooperatives in 2007, the same
farmers in 2009 stated that they would not sell to
cooperatives. In addition, 47.8% of the
farmers trusted and benefitted from Europe (EU) pro
ject training programmes in 2007,
while selling rate decreased to 35.6% in 2009. Furt
hermore, 30% of the participants
mentioned that they could not trust the project sta
ff since the project duration was short.
Because of the reasons mentioned, participation in
the project was realized at low level.
Keywords:
Dairy farming, European funded projects, Project p
articipation, Rural
development, Rural sociology.
